I haven't re-read my posts from January 2017 when I first saw Vertigo, but I have done a total 180 on it, it's brilliant and hypnotic and seems to exist outside of time, in a way unlike any other film I've ever seen. Second only to Shadow of a Doubt for my favorite Hitchcock. I was nonplussed when I saw it for the first time, and last night was only the second time I'd seen it. but it'd stuck in my mind for a year and a half. I also think some of the key themes are more resonant with me now.
― flappy bird, Friday, 25 May 2018 21:34 (five years ago) link
Wazzabout this intriguing giallo take on Vertigo currently showing on MUBI, One One on Top of the Other?
― omgneto and ittanium mayne (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 26 May 2018 02:23 (five years ago) link
Ah Alfred you gave me a good laugh
Cheers myFriends
― We’re all after that same rainbow’s end (Ross), Saturday, 26 May 2018 02:28 (five years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tesqTwX7cpc
just watching youtube and revisited this scene and it is so Twin Peaks! especially at .5 speed (try it!). this scene is the transformation of Kim Novak's character into someone with a new identity.
visually it kind of feels like a formal precursor to the Black Lodge, with green curtains instead of red. Jimmy Stewart trapped framed in that menacing backdrop, the music building to a dramatic crescendo, the minor key melancholy eeriness of it all. def see this movie if you are a fan of Twin Peaks/Mulholland Drive.
― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Saturday, 21 July 2018 20:56 (five years ago) link
this is a good list of influenceshttp://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/twin-peaks-david-lynch-influences
― adam the (abanana), Saturday, 21 July 2018 22:15 (five years ago) link
"Green Fog" is showing at the local cinema this weekend. (Guy Maddin's Vertigo remake made with misc. clips from various SF-based films.) Might check it out, esp. since it's playing with the Hitchcock version as a double-bill.
― henry s, Saturday, 21 July 2018 22:35 (five years ago) link
It's fun, and at only 65 minutes should make a good second half of a double feature(even better as a first, but not for Vertigo virgins)
― kelp, clam and carrion (sic), Saturday, 21 July 2018 23:39 (five years ago) link
yes, it's good
i think Lynch even intro'd Vertigo at the IFC Center once
― the ignatius rock of ignorance (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 21 July 2018 23:43 (five years ago) link
Scotty is one sick fuck
― Xia Nu del Vague (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 17 October 2019 12:26 (four years ago) link
turns out Maddin put The Green Fog up for free on Vimeo six months ago
― Dollarmite Is My Name (sic), Tuesday, 17 March 2020 03:15 (four years ago) link
Wow
― Lipstick Traces (on a Cigarette Alone) (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 17 March 2020 03:56 (four years ago) link
yeah! so good
― geoffreyess, Tuesday, 17 March 2020 05:45 (four years ago) link
omg thanks sic
― Miami weisse (WmC), Tuesday, 17 March 2020 12:47 (four years ago) link
Awesome! Good work sic
― ---------------six feet----------------- (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 17 March 2020 13:20 (four years ago) link
was I too high when I re-watched this for the first time in 10+ years last night or 1) does the lighting in the scene at the Argosy book shop actually gradually dim throughout the scene and 2) are they driving on the "wrong" side of the road both times they drive to the bell tower?
― Paul Ponzi, Saturday, 4 July 2020 12:40 (three years ago) link
1. Yes https://alfredhitchblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/06/vertigo-deconstruction-of-a-scene-argosy-book-shop/
― Alba, Saturday, 4 July 2020 17:24 (three years ago) link
Saw 1958's Bell, Book, and Candle listed on TCM over the weekend, didnt get a chance to watch it but looking to catch it this week. Posting here bc wiki sez: "It stars Kim Novak as a witch who casts a spell on her neighbor, played by James Stewart"... wtf! Surprised I never heard of this, anyone seen it? Is it the rom-com companion to Vertigo that it sounds like?
― turn the jawhatthefuckever on (One Eye Open), Monday, 7 December 2020 13:50 (three years ago) link
Yes, it's charming (no pun intended) and it features a cat named Pyewacket, you can't go wrong
― Josefa, Monday, 7 December 2020 14:52 (three years ago) link
I only saw this for the first time last night (the list of films I haven't seen would make people on ILF blush and turn away, I suspect). Damn but I can't stop thinking about it. I'm unsure about Novak - there's a blankness there but it feels deliberate and stylised: she's a vessel or a plaything that various men manipulate and distort. The analogue for Hitchcock is pretty clear.
So many great scenes but the scene with the sequoias is running round and round my head. And the line that jumped at me was (if films are Rorschach then...): "Only one is a wanderer; two together are always going somewhere."
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Wednesday, 13 January 2021 12:58 (three years ago) link
I keep thinking about this today. It's impossible coming to such a revered film (a film that comes at you out of a bathroom, cloaked in neon mist) - such that I already want to watch it again, now that I've got the first watch out of the way. The thing that keeps coming to me is James Stewart's eyes - how much acting he does with them. There is a moment in Ernie's, the first time he sees Judyline, when a look almost passes between them, that is all eyes: after the fact it's clear that he'd fallen for her, and she was trying to tell him (tell might be too strong a verb - suggest, insinuate).
As a couple of people have said, I want to eat in Ernies. All that red though - like a restaurant in the Tanz dance academy.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Wednesday, 13 January 2021 20:52 (three years ago) link
Good posts, Chinaski!
― Next Time Might Be Hammer Time (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 13 January 2021 20:54 (three years ago) link
https://variety.com/2023/film/news/robert-downey-jr-vertigo-remake-paramount-1235563018/
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/272/014/e6a.jpg
― Infanta Terrible (j.lu), Thursday, 23 March 2023 23:20 (one year ago) link
No. Just no.
― Three Rings for the Elven Bishop (Dan Peterson), Thursday, 23 March 2023 23:30 (one year ago) link
imagine if it's terrible and people watch it as a joke and it becomes more well known than the original with a generation of people.
― Camaraderie at Arms Length, Thursday, 23 March 2023 23:33 (one year ago) link
Rewatched for the first time in a long while, because my wife and kids had never seen it. My wife liked it but was skeptical of its claims to all-time greatness — "Not even the best Hitchcock," she said. The kids were mostly kind of baffled, my oldest objecting particularly to the fact that by the end there are no sympathetic characters in sight. His most telling comment was, "I don't know, it made me uncomfortable." I said, don't you think it was supposed to? He said, "Maybe, but I didn't like feeling that."
I do think it's great, and also uncomfortable. Mostly it's a really strange film. It never loses its eeriness, even once you get the reveal of Judy's complicity. It's like the film has conjured ghosts and loses control of them, it stays haunted. Also this was the first time I'd watched it since Twin Peaks: The Return, and it reminded me how much Vertigo is embedded in the Twin Peaks DNA.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Sunday, 24 September 2023 13:46 (seven months ago) link
Cool. Feel free to watch THE GREEN FOG when you get a chance.
turns out Maddin put The Green Fog up for free on Vimeo🕸 six months ago
― Dose of Thunderbirds (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 24 September 2023 13:56 (seven months ago) link
I always wonder if Vertigo, (or the book it was adapted from, which I haven't read) was drawing in some way on this Capek short story.
https://openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu/premedical-society/2020/10/29/karel-capek-vertigo/
― Lily Dale, Sunday, 24 September 2023 15:20 (seven months ago) link
Huh! Good little story, and definitely seems like it could be related.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Sunday, 24 September 2023 15:33 (seven months ago) link
It'll never be my favorite Hitchcock.
― hat trick of trashiness (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 24 September 2023 18:31 (seven months ago) link
Same; it'll always be my second- or third-favorite
― 50 Best Fellas (Eric H.), Sunday, 24 September 2023 18:52 (seven months ago) link
I have too many I need to revisit to have a solid ranking. Vertigo's in the top tier. And I think it's distinct — obviously it shares a lot of obsessions with other Hitchcocks, but its vibe is specific and odd.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Sunday, 24 September 2023 19:54 (seven months ago) link
What are the chances that "Mad Men"'s Matthew Weiner had this film in mind when he created his own character named Midge, who was herself an illustrator/painter?
― Hongro Hongro Hippies (Myonga Vön Bontee), Sunday, 24 September 2023 20:30 (seven months ago) link
Very good. I'd never even considered that.
― clemenza, Sunday, 24 September 2023 20:32 (seven months ago) link
Oh, good call on Midge in Mad Men. I mean, the Mad Men opening montage of the silhouette guy falling is a direct Vertigo reference, right?
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Sunday, 24 September 2023 21:20 (seven months ago) link
I think Vertigo is a great art installation and a middling movie. Your oldest kid is right!
― Chuck_Tatum, Sunday, 24 September 2023 22:31 (seven months ago) link
It's an interesting question whether it's supposed to make you feel uncomfortable. Hitchcock wanted his audiences to feel scared, sure, but he was also firmly on the entertainment side, I think if you had suggested to him he was trying to challenge his audience he'd have reacted with disgust. He's def using Jimmy Stewart for shock value in the way everyone's described, but does he want the audience to be freaked out by him? Or to relate to him, while still feeling weirded out by the turns the film takes?
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 25 September 2023 09:09 (seven months ago) link
Well, it explains why the film was a box office disappointment.
― hat trick of trashiness (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 25 September 2023 09:12 (seven months ago) link
Yes, and Hitch saw it as a failure because of that. So I don't think his intention was to alienate people.
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 25 September 2023 09:15 (seven months ago) link
Most directors make a film which departs quite a bit from what they have been doing.
Saw "Make way for Tomorrow" (McCarey) yesterday and you can see the comedic touch that he displayed in "Duck Soup" which ultimately served other, more tragic, ends and ended up bombing at the box office.
I think this is where auteur theory can really fail as often directors aren't in control, is how I break it down
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 25 September 2023 09:28 (seven months ago) link
Oh they often aren't but I think Hitchcock absolutely was throughout the 50's.
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 25 September 2023 09:32 (seven months ago) link
Amusing to imagine Hitchcock crafting *that* ending and thinking he had a box office success on his hands.
― ryan, Monday, 25 September 2023 18:04 (seven months ago) link
Yeah I mean, it's hard to say his intention wasn't to alienate people when he a.) abruptly shifts the POV from Scottie to Judy in the last section, and b.) makes Scottie more and more unlikable and crazy right up to the end. Basically daring audiences to follow along. Which was part of his bag of tricks anyway, confounding expectations — but maybe in Vertigo he went farther than the audiences were willing to.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Monday, 25 September 2023 18:08 (seven months ago) link
Yeah what I doubt a bit is that Hitchcock viewed the "unlikable and crazy" behaviour of Stewart's character through the same lens we do now; I think he probably thought this dare was less of an ask than we think.
Anyway apparently his own reasoning for why it failed commercially was that Stewart was too old, which, that's a factor but hardly in anyone's top5 haha.
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 25 September 2023 20:42 (seven months ago) link